Those cardinals’ hats are not tin-foil—and yet they use publicly hand-counted paper ballots!

“Hand Counted Papal Ballots”

Can the Papal Election Be Hacked? Not Likely. They Use Publicly Hand-Counted Paper Ballots.
By BRAD FRIEDMAN on 2/22/2013, 6:05am PT

With another papal election coming up, one might wonder how the papal elections, since 1059 or so, have managed to remain secure and unchallenged?

As security technologist Bruce Schneir details at CNN, the trick is what we have long referred to here as”Democracy’s Gold Standard”: publicly hand-counted paper ballots.

Here at The BRAD BLOG we’ve been calling for the same thing for U.S. elections for some time. Granted, it hasn’t been 1000 years, it’s just beginning to feel like it. We were even recently immortalized for that effort.

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